Cannabis history

MAY 3, 2014 - MARIJUANA WAS CRIMINALIZED IN 1923, BUT WHY?

Pot activists in Canada
who took part in the annual "Global Marijuana March" on May
3 demanded the decriminalization of marijuana. They might also have
asked why it became illegal in the first place. That happened in
1923, and if there was any kind of parliamentary debate, historians
have been unable to find a record of it. When Parliament decided to
add marijuana to the schedule of proscribed drugs that year, Canada
became one of the first countries to make smoking pot illegal. The
U.S. didn't accomplish that until 14 years later, in the midst of the
Great Depression. In 1923, then prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie
King's Liberal government introduced an Act to Prohibit the Improper
Use of Opium and other Drugs. The federal health minister at the
time, Henri Beland, said the bill was a consolidation of other
legislation that had been passed over the previous few years, with
some changes. At the time, the only drugs on the schedule were opium,
morphine, cocaine and eucaine (a local anesthetic first introduced as
a substitute for cocaine).

The new bill added three
drugs to the proscribed list: heroin, codeine and "cannabis
indica (Indian hemp) or hasheesh." The only mention of the
proposed changes to the schedule recorded in Hansard was on April 23,
when Beland told the House of Commons, "There is a new drug in
the schedule."